Wordle 1966 Hint

Hint: Yiddish term for trash, junk, or cheap crap.

Not Enough? Get the first letter of today's Wordle below.

New to Wordle? You can play it at the New York Times, and here are some thoughts on how I go about solving each day's puzzle.

First Letter: D

It's Been One of "Those" Health Weeks

Nothing major.

I have a cold, which I'm guessing I caught while sitting in the waiting room last Thursday during Tamara's carpal tunnel surgery -- the symptoms started Saturday or Sunday and it seems to be at its height at the moment. At least I think it's a cold, and since those generally last 7-10 days, I should be getting toward the end of it. I suppose it could be Covid, which is pretty much the same thing as a cold these days. Mostly just an annoyance and something I don't want to pass around to other people, so I've only left the house a couple of times.

Another reason for not getting out much: A couple of days ago, I started having some shoulder pain and numbness in my left pinky. The quick self-diagnosis is "ulnar nerve entrapment," and the treatment seems to be "take NSAIDS and try to keep the arm extended rather than the elbow bent." I'm doing that and it seems to be subsiding. Riding a motorcycle with shoulder pain and hand numbness doesn't seem like a great idea, so I've only done it once (quick convenience store run, a couple of miles each way).

Neither of those has prevented me from getting work done, although typing is a little problematic with the nerve thing. At nearly 60, they're definitely not the worst problems I could have.

As for the "possible eye cancer" bit, after a few days of worrying, my brain finally turned that off until my January appointment to find out more. But I am going to start taking melatonin and zeaxanthin. Both of them are subjects of early studies as possibly helpful, and both of them are useful for other things (sleep and general eye health respectively). I don't expect to "cure my possible eye cancer" with them, but they're in the "seems like it can't hurt" category.

Watch This

Back in August, my cheap ($10-ish) watch broke.

No biggie. I'd bought it when my Fitbit Charge 6 started acting up -- it occasionally doesn't want to accept a charge, eventually completely dies, then at some point I'll get it to charge up, re-connect it to my phone, etc. So when the el cheapo watch fell apart, I just went back to the Fitbit.

[Note: I also looked into American-made watches -- not a reasonable value proposition for my use case.]

But I also bought an even MORE el cheapo watch, $2.50-ish, to have around just in case the Fitbit shit the bed again. Which it did last week. The el cheapo seems to have kept good time for the week, but its band isn't very comfortable and I'm not going to spend $10 on a better band for a $2.50 watch. So I finally went ahead and ordered the Casio FT500WC (not an affiliate link):

It arrived yesterday. Perfect for my needs. Comfortable band, button light, very legible, good-looking (no, it's not a Rolex, it's a field watch and looks like one).

Too early to tell how durable it is, but if it lasts, fuck a bunch of Fitbit nonsense. I'm not the only one in the family who's had the "my Fitbit just died" stuff happen.

And if it doesn't last, I've got that $2.50 timepiece to fall back to while I find a good replacement.

If I ever go back to a fitness tracker, it won't be a Fitbit. I used a cheaper brand, Amazfit, for a long time before research studies started handing out Fitbits in return for me sharing the data (all those studies are over now), and never had a problem with that device. It didn't do quite as much as Fitbit does, but it did what it did without breaking, and I never found a lot of use for the extra Fitbit stuff.